Amira Mohammad al-Sheikh (l.) with her daughter Samia at Ardamata, a camp for the internally displaced, in Darfur.
"Past the Arabs meandering over the fields on horseback and the burned huts overrun with vines, across the muddy rivers and beyond the checkpoints with their snoozy officials and signs in French he can't read, Ahmed Abu Bakr wakes up in his makeshift refugee camp and starts another day of waiting.
'Every day I listen,' says Ahmed, who walked for four days without stopping when he left his home in Masterie, Sudan, six months ago and headed to neighboring Chad. 'I listen to London.'"
When he will be able to return home is still unclear. But the political situation appears to be moving ahead with sudden speed after US Secretary of State Colin Powell, testifying in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Thursday, said the situation in Darfur that Ahmed fled qualified as "genocide." It was the first such declaration by a member of the Bush administration and could put pressure on the government in Khartoum to resolve the 18-month crisis that has left 30,000 people dead and 1.4 million more homeless. Should the United Nations echo Mr. Powell's declaration, member states would be obligated to intervene under a 1948 genocide convention.
Post a Comment